


what is love but a chemical reaction that causes insanity

by starforged



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Implied Sexual Content, Spoilers for 804, mildly nsfw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-07
Updated: 2019-05-07
Packaged: 2020-02-27 12:21:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18738916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starforged/pseuds/starforged
Summary: Brienne is his heart, but his life has always been Cersei’s.





	what is love but a chemical reaction that causes insanity

It would be a ridiculous to claim that Jaime Lannister has never been happy before. This is a different sort of happiness, one that curls and rests with contentment. Maybe that’s the word for it. Content. He has, for once, made his own decisions about his life. About what, who, he wants. 

He turns on his side to face Brienne as she sleeps. Her back is to him, bare and glowing palely against the fire. It was a brash decision, made on wine and adrenaline, but he isn’t sure how else it could have gone. How else they could be. 

And she didn’t turn away from him. 

She didn’t see his stump and give him a look of revulsion. 

Jaime Lannister has known love, and while Cersei’s feelings are something he feels he’s never quite known, he knows he loved her. Deeply, without fear, because they were two parts of a whole.

Brienne is different. She’s part of him now, made him better, made him care about the world outside of himself, outside of Cersei. He loves her because he can, because he chose to, because she accepted him. 

He moves closer to her, one arm over her waist and against her bare stomach, pulling her back into him. She grunts in her sleep, and he kisses the expanse of her neck. 

–

Jaime wakes with her sitting up and hovering over him, the sheet covering her breasts and a twist in her face as if she isn’t quite sure what’s happened here. 

“It can’t have been that bad,” he grumbles. “I’m old, not impotent.”  


Her face goes red, and her lips part with a smack. It’s a pity that so many others before him had cast her aside. Her short hair is a mess, bits sticking out at odd angles. Her freckles glow in early morning light. 

She’s radiant. 

He loves her. 

“It was fine!” Brienne snaps at him.   


“Just fine?” He arches an eyebrow at her, a teasing lilt to his voice, and her thigh trembles under the touch of his fingers as he slides his hand over her leg.   


Her skin isn’t soft, and her hands are rough as she cups his face between them, forcing him to look her in the eye. This is what it is to sleep with a knight. No wonder women have gone crazy for them. 

“I’m not going to go as far as to say my honor was important to me–”  


“But it is,” Jaime interjects.  


She ignores him. “But I do need to know - what was that?”

“Sex.”  


He’s being purposely obtuse, because that’s who he is with her, and he loves the rise it gets out of her. His hand is at the apex of her thighs, and he shivers with the heat coming off of her. 

“Don’t,” she whispers. There’s a hint of threat that laces with that word. His hand stops, and he leans his face into her grip, careful to not break eye contact as his lips brush across her hand near her thumb.   


“I want to be here. With you. In this bed. If we can manage all bloody day, I’d be a happy man. I know we can’t,” he manages to say before she protests. “But I would like the opportunity to change your opinion of _fine_.”  


–

It lasts only long enough for the Lady Stark to give him her snide comment about Cersei’s impending death. Brienne watches his face carefully. He rubs his fingers through his beard, staring beyond her. 

–

Cersei is his, and he is hers. That’s always been the way of the world. Brienne would listen if he told her, but he doesn’t think she’d understand, would take his words and let it hurt her. She’s used to men hurting her, but not like this. 

He imagines dragon fire touching Cersei’s skin, soft and perfumed, and a shudder of revulsion threatens to take him over. She is many things: evil, conniving, manipulative, self-serving. But she doesn’t deserve to die with King’s Landing burning around her. She deserves to die in his arms. 

And now that reality has slipped in around him, like a too tight cloak, he knows he should die in hers. 

Brienne. Masculine, a mountain, freckled, brave, loyal, his heart. 

He trails kisses over her collar bone, nipping gently at the skin and listening to the hitches of her breath when he does. 

He doesn’t deserve her. 

He’s never deserved anyone _but_  Cersei. 

His tongue paints a stripe across her belly. She whispers his name with the same sort of reverence that a septa would the gods.

Jaime doesn’t want that for her; he’s not good enough for that. 

He wants to tell her his turmoils, the heaviness in his heart, how he would worship her in whatever way she wished of him for the rest of his life if it was his life to give. 

Her fingers are twisted in his hair, and he loves the wild abandon of her strength. 

It’s not his life to give to her.

–

Cersei is his. And Brienne couldn’t understand what it is that Jaime has to do. So he does what he does best: he ruins the things he holds dear for his family. Her screams of rage between racking sobs reach him, and they harden his heart. 

They steel him to do what must be done. 

Brienne is his heart, but his life has always been Cersei’s.

And her life has always been in his hands. 


End file.
